25 Tools to Strengthen Your Brain, Get Relief from Anxiety and Depression Reduce Relapses

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on 25 Ways to Prevent anxiety and depression relapses. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. Now, it's important to recognize if you've got generalized anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder, it may not be possible to totally prevent every single relapse. But there are a lot of things that you can do to strengthen your brain. So, so let's take a look at what happens and why that is. Let's start out talking about the aftermath. When people are under a lot of anxiety or stress for a long time or experience trauma, it causes ongoing activation of the stress response, that good old HPA axis. When that happens, this actually causes a strengthening of the anxiety autopilot, the default mode network, or your autopilot and your amygdala, which is where you do a lot of fear and threat processing. They actually become more strongly connected the longer the anxiety goes on or the more intense the anxiety. Additionally, it weakens the relaxation response or the vagal response. Your vagus nerve, 80% of the vagus nerves function is to trigger the rest and digest, or the relaxation response. But when the default mode network, when the autopilot and the amygdala start communicating and really enhance their connections, sometimes the vagus nerve is just not able to do what it needs to do. It's like, hey guys, hello. We can relax, hello. And they're not paying attention. When people are under chronic stress, it also literally alters the structure of the brain. It reduces the size of the hippocampus, which is where we do a lot of learning, memory and emotion processing. And it strengthens the amygdala. And the amygdala actually grows in size. When I say it shrinks the the size of the hippocampus, what we see is destruction of neurons. And one of the things that we're going to talk about for strengthening your brain is promoting something called neurogenesis, or the restructuring, rebuilding of neurons. And the hippocampus is one of the unique areas in your brain that is known to be able to regenerate some. So that's really awesome. But not only do we see a strengthening of the anxiety autopilot, a weakening of the relaxation response, or your body's ability to actually trigger the relaxation response. Alterations and structures of the brain. But we also see alterations in hormone levels, your stress hormones, your thyroid hormones and your gonadal hormones, your testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin, progesterone, the list goes on. Alterations in your microbiome when you're under stress, your vagus nerve tells your gut, hey, there's a threat out here. And it alters which bacteria are prominent and proliferating in the gut microbiome. It also alters your circadian rhythms because guess what, when you're under stress, you ain't sleeping as well and you're probably not maintaining your sleep schedule schedule. So it's going to impact your circadian rhythms which further negatively impacts your hormone levels and your microbiome. So it is a big involved process and it's important to recognize, just like I talked about in the last video, that mental health is health. When we experience emotions, whether they are accurate, on point emotions and you're going through an extreme trauma, or whether they are signs of mental ill health, it alters everything in your body. It alters your immune system, it alters your microbiome, it alters your sleep, it alters your pain perception and of course it alters your neurotransmitter balances. When your brain is bathed in stress hormones, is less able to logically process information you're in. Fight or flee. Your brain's like, you know, I don't have time to worry about learning multiplication right now or learning how to do XYZ task right now. I need to protect myself, so that's where I'm going to devote my energy. Likewise, if you're not accurately or effectively processing information, it's also not devoting resources to, to remembering what I call non survival things. Your brain will remember stimuli associated with the stress or the trauma. It is aware, maybe even hyper aware of the potential threats in the environment, but it is not paying attention to what I would call benign or non survival stuff in the environment. Again, it makes sense if, if you are anxious, if you are under stress, then it's a whole lot more important to be aware of those threats so you can protect yourself if you're actually in a threatening situation. All of this leads to poor short term memory, difficulty accessing long term memories. You know, there's this memory that you have, you're trying to access a name of a song, a actor in a movie, whatever it is, and it's like right on the tip of your tongue, tongue and it drives you bananas because you just, you can't remember it, you can't access it. You may have brain fog. If you're not sleeping well, you're not clearing out that adenosine. When there's cortisol and adrenaline and glutamate just bathing your brain cells, it's going to Contribute to brain fog. You're going to be focused on fight or flee, not higher order thinking. You're going to potentially have a shorter attention span for non survival related stimulants stuff which all of this ultimately increases distress. And you may be saying, well, okay, so that happens when I'm in an anxiety moment? Well, yes and no. If you have persistent anxiety, persistent stress, persistent fear because of trauma, then your brain starts operating on that anxiety based autopilot and it'll be a while. It's going to take time and effort to help it recover to what I call the non anxious state. And the best analogy I can make is a hiking path. When if you've ever gone hiking, you know that paths that don't get used very much start to get much more narrow and overgrown and really difficult to navigate. The paths that people take all the time are wide open and they're really clear of debris and they're easy to navigate. Well, when you were in your anxiety stress trauma framework, when you were in that anxiety autopilot, the paths that were being maintained were the anxiety and the stress paths, the fear paths. So memory and learning and attention and all those other things, those paths started to get way overgrown and they're hard to navigate now. Can you navigate them? Well, slowly but surely. And it's going to take, but it's going to take time in order to start clearing those paths again. The other analogy I can make is if you were on bed rest for six months or a year, or heaven forbid in a coma, you wouldn't just get released from bed rest or wake up out of your coma and start going to the gym. Your body has atrophied, if you will, and it's going to take time to rebuild those muscles to get that nervous system kicked into gear again. The same thing is true with your brain. It's going to take time. Those brain muscles, and that's your brain is not a muscle. But, but those brain processes have atrophy. You know, that's kind of like that path growing, growing together and becoming all entangled in vines. And it's going to take time to strengthen those pathways again. To strengthen those. And again, they're actually not muscles. But just bear with me with the analogy to strengthen those brain muscles again, it's going to take time. Don't expect it to just boom, happen. So what can you do, rebuilding your brain? What we're really focusing on, or what I'm really focusing on in this video is something called neurogenesis helping you start rebuilding those pathways. Strengthening and rebuilding that hippocampus so it can engage in more effective learning and emotion processing again. And it can, can take away some of the energy, it can borrow some of the resources that's currently going to that amygdala. Sleep. I know you're like, what sleep when you are chronically sleep deprived. And that may mean not getting enough sleep or that may not may mean not getting enough quality sleep. But when you're chronically sleep deprived, it triggers the stress response and increases your levels of stress hormones. Those stress hormones are the exact things we are trying to reduce so your brain can regenerate itself. Stress hormones are toxic to brain cells is ultimately what we're talking about. In short doses, not a big deal. But when the stress hormones are persistent, they are toxic to brain cells. So getting good quality, adequate sleep is really important and you probably don't want to hear it. But according to the National Sleep foundation, that still means seven to nine hours for adults of any age, whether you are 25 or 75. Seven to nine hours of quality sleep. If you're not getting quality sleep, I have multiple videos on the YouTube channel that talk about sleep hygiene. You can look into that. It's one of those things that if you choose to do it, a lot of times there are interventions that you can use to improve your sleep hygiene. And it's something that is very, very doable and non medicinal. I'm not talking about taking medications, I'm talking about, you know, adjusting your blue light and your schedules and stuff. But that is one of the most basic interventions to, to help your body heal. The other benefit of sleep is guess what? When you're asleep, your body is able to clear out all of the adenosine, clear out all of, well, not all of the free radicals, but it's able to clear out all the debris and crap from the day and rebuild and rebalance and recalibrate. Just like I've talked about before. If you think of your body as a factory, nighttime is when production is shut down and the cleaning crew and the maintenance crew goes in to get everything ready for the next day. If you're not getting enough sleep, then the cleaning crew and the maintenance crew don't have time to do their job and you wake up the next morning and things just aren't working quite as well. Nutrition is another thing. What you eat used as the building blocks to make tissues, to make neurotransmitters, to make hormones, et cetera. Good nutrition following an anti inflammatory diet, that means reducing. I'm not Foolhardy enough to think that most people are going to completely cut out. But reducing highly processed carbohydrates like your white breads, your white flour, your white sugar, those sorts of things, as well as red meat, minimizing that and processed meat, anything with nitrites or nitrates in it, all of those can contribute to inflammation. Increasing your omega 3s, reducing your omega 6s. Again, I have videos on nutrition as well. Increasing your flavonoids. This is part of a anti inflammatory diet and flavonoids are components in your colorful fruits and vegetables. When you eat deep, rich colored fruits and vegetables and even like black beans and black rice, they are very rich in flavonoids that serve antioxidant capacity functions as well as a variety of other functions. There was another article that I read and I am going to put it out here. I am not recommending taking melatonin. You need to check that with your doctor because it can interact with other medications. And you know, I'm not a medical doctor, so I'm not going to prescribe that. However, melatonin has been shown in some studies to promote neurogenesis. So it might be something that is helpful for you, especially if you're having difficulty sleeping, to talk with your doctor about, is this something I can take and would it help me remember? Melatonin is made by breaking down serotonin. So if your serotonin levels have been low, then your melatonin levels have also probably been low. So as your serotonin goes up, your melatonin, your body's ability to make melatonin goes up. Oxygenation is another thing that helps with neurogenesis. Your body needs oxygen to perform all of the chemical reactions, a lot of the chemical reactions that it performs, oxygenation and exercise, I'll talk about both of those at the same time. Help bring nutrients to your brain, help bring oxygen to your brain and help your brain be healthier. Just like you don't do very well if you're not breathing, your brain doesn't do very well if it's not getting oxygen. Oxygenation can be as easy as a couple of times a day doing the four square breathing that we've talked about. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four,. Do that three or four times. You can do that every time you get to a stoplight. Do it once and you will find that you're increasing your oxygenation. As oxygenation goes up, your energy levels also may go up and your mental clarity may also improve a little Bit relaxation is another important tool for neurogenesis. Not only do we want to increase, not only do we want to decrease stress chemicals, but we want to increase relaxation chemicals. This will help get those stress chemicals out of your brain and promote relaxation in your body, which will reduce the production of free radicals, it can reduce inflammation, and again, it can contribute to creating an environment that is pro. Neurogenic. That's my new word for the day. I just made that one up. And exercise is also helpful. Not only does exercise increase oxygenation, but it increases circulation. So that good oxygenated blood is just flowing through your veins and getting up to your brain where it needs to be affective interventions. That means emotional awe. And I know I've done videos on awe and wonder before and they haven't done really well because I think a lot of people think, well, that's kind of a weird concept. Well, it is. However, there is a lot of research on it. When we see things that are awe inspiring, breathtaking, it actually promotes curiosity. It promotes the release of dopamine, it promotes the release of positive chemicals within your brain. Endorphins are also released when, when we are struck, when we are awestruck, whether it's a beautiful rainbow or a bunny rabbit. And when we talk about awe, some people think it has to be something majestic like the Grand Canyon. And I like to think about it as pretty much anything that either takes my breath away or makes me go aww, like the bunny rabbit. And yes, we're back to the cottontails, the rabbits that we have in our yard, or the owl that was sitting on my roof last night. Those awe moments can make us feel a little bit more humble, make us get outside of our own head, because we're focused on something that is inspiring in some way that promotes positive brain chemicals, reduces stress, brain chemicals, compassion and loving kindness. Now these are, this is kind of two things. Having compassion for yourself is going to be really, really important. We're going to talk about that some down when we get into the relationship place. But it is important to feel compassion towards yourself because not to judge yourself too harshly. If you start feeling anxious, aight, you start feeling anxious. What is it telling you? Get curious about it instead of getting angry or frustrated or feeling guilty or defeated. Okay, I feel anxious. What's going on? Let me be a scientist. But being compassionate with yourself and also recognizing that if you've been experiencing anxiety or trauma or depression, it's going to take you a little time to build up your endurance, to get back to where you want to be and being kind to yourself, not judging yourself harshly for not being 100 perfect tomorrow, that that's not realistic. Be compassionate. If you start setting goals that are unrealistic, then you're going to start feeling angry at yourself and angry at the world because you're not able to accomplish it. And that's going to promote those stress chemicals we need to go easy peasy. Compassion. If you have difficulty with self compassion, think to yourself, if this was my child or my best friend, would I expect them to be, you know, advancing as quickly as meeting these expectations? Probably not. We usually set higher expectations for ourselves. Or think to yourself, if this were a physical illness I was recovering from, maybe you were in or injury, maybe you were in a really. And please, I hope nobody ever is. But if you were in a really bad car accident, it takes a while to recover. Would you be angry and down on yourself because the very next day you weren't able to go run a marathon? No. Well, physical health and mental health are part of the same being. So don't hold it to a different standard. Be compassionate with yourself. And that is my little nod to mental Health Awareness month. Loving kindness can be very, very helpful for inspiring compassion. The loving kindness meditation and yes, there's a video on it helps us recognize that everybody wants to feel healthy, safe and at peace. We want to feel healthy, safe and at peace. By starting your day or doing this right before you go into a stressful situation, imagine sending health, safety and peace to yourself, to other people. Having compassion for other people can help you view their behaviors and their reactions. Maybe from a more compassionate stance, instead of getting angry or feeling frustrated, that maybe they're being a little persnickety, will say you can have compassion and think, oh gosh, you know, how dark must it be in their head? I wish for them that they could feel healthy, safe and at peace so they wouldn't feel like they needed to be so angry all the time. Very different. You're recognizing that they're not acting nice, but you're seeing a potentially different origin of that. Recognizing that that anger, that anxiety, that irritability probably comes from a place of feeling unsafe. And that is a compassionate outlook and enjoyment. We need to do things we enjoy that kind of goes along with relaxation. Doing things that make you smile, that trigger all those muscles in your face that make you smile. Activate that trigeminal nerve, activate the vagus nerve activ and activate the relaxation response. Do things you like, whether it's for me, gardening, watching the birds, rock climbing, Whatever it is that works for you, do something every day, 15 minutes, you don't have to make it last long. And that it could even be listening to your favorite comedian or listening to your favorite artist. Cognitively, it's important to be aware of the moment, increase your mindfulness. A lot of times in our culture, we have been taught to behave mindlessly, to just put one foot in front of the other and keep plugging along and not really pay attention to what's going on around us because we're eye on the prize, we're focused on the future instead of the now. Awareness of the moment can help you appreciate the good things that are going on in the moment, but it also helps you identify potential triggers and vulnerabilities for stress before they get out of hand. Just like when you get a cut, you want to identify, well, that potentially could get infected. You're going to clean it out and put a band aid on it or something instead of just ignoring it, hopefully and letting it get all in infected and pussy and nasty. Awareness promotes early intervention. Early intervention reduces the amount of stress chemicals. That's all there is to it. You also need to be aware in general of your particular triggers for distress. What stresses you out? What pushes your buttons? Know these things, whether it's people, places, things, attitudes, even smells or sights. We've talked, I've talked in other videos about how in, in our house we call it flat surface. Itis when the flat surfaces start to become inflamed with piles of crap. It stresses me out to no end. I do not like clutter on flat surfaces. It's just one of my things. I know that's one of my triggers. Now, can I always have a perfectly clean, orderly house? No. However, I recognized and just yesterday, you know, I walked into the kitchen and it was looking a little bit in disarray. And my first reaction was to get a little triggered and feel a little stressed out about it. And then my next reaction was, you know what? Not worth my energy. It's fine, I'll clean it up later and got ready for work. In the past, I may have gotten really stressed out about it and then stayed there and angrily cleaned it up, which would have made me late for work and everything else, and my stress chemicals would have been up here. So being aware of your triggers, what things trigger it for you, how can you prevent those triggers when at all possible, but sometimes they're not preventable. So when they are not preventable, how can you mitigate them so they don't cause you to go into a rage or a total anxiety attack when you experience a trigger. If spiders are a trigger for you, when you encounter a spider, how can you mitigate the impact of that spider so it doesn't trigger a full out anxiety response? What can you do? One of my really good friends is terrified of wasps. Same sort of thing in Tennessee and probably everywhere. You can't get away from wasps. They're everywhere. And in Tennessee, a lot of the wasps that we have are paper wasps and they're really docile and benign, but she's terrified of them. So, okay, when you encounter them, what can you do to mitigate that trigger? You can prevent as much as possible by keeping the wasps nests down. But when you do encounter one, how can you address it? What can you do to keep yourself from going to a full blown panic? Vulnerabilities. We also need to be aware of those. Vulnerabilities are conditions that make you more prone or vulnerable to a distress response or to a strong stress response. For me, when I am overtired, I am more likely to react with a strong stress response. For my husband, when his blood sugar is low, he's a lot more likely to respond with a strong stress response. So knowing your vulnerabilities is really important because again, then you can prevent them as much as possible. But when they are occurring, when you're sleep deprived or sick or low blood sugar or in pain or whatever it is, you can say, all right, I know that I'm going to be more prone to being irritable or anxious today. So what steps can I take to buffer myself against the stressors of the world? Attitude. Having an attitude of gratitude can be helpful. And I know it sounds hokey to some people, but it is important to take a moment and instead of saying I'll be happy, when saying I'll be happy looking around at what is in the moment, what are you grateful for in the moment? And every morning when I go to on my way to work, I recognize that I'm grateful for the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees and yes, I know it rhymes. It's just one of those things I do. It's like singing Goober Peace. But I go through a list of things that I'm grateful for and that's how I start my day. Having an attitude of heartiness is also important because we can be grateful, but most of the time, everything in our life is not going to be perfect. Hardiness focuses on commitment, control and challenge. Recognizing all of the things in your life that you're committed to sort of seeing those all as little slices of a pie and recognizing what aspects of those things you can control. Being grateful for all of the pieces of the pie that are going well, recognizing what you can do to control or improve the parts of the pie that are kind of squished and viewing problems or squished pieces of pie as challenges instead of barriers that you can't get through, viewing them as challenges or, dare I say, obstacles. Things that you need to figure out how to get over, under, around, or through. Learn and let go. This is one of my favorite for neurogenesis. Many times when people do things that make us angry or when we do things that we feel guilty for, we hold on to that resentment. We hold on to that guilt. And all that does is maintain a low level or sometimes moderate level of stress hormones. Anger and resentment is just. You're kind of poisoning yourself with stress hormones. Forgiveness, and I know it's the is the F word. Forgiveness doesn't mean saying, no problem, it's fine. It means, okay, it happened. I don't like it. I accept your apology, and I'm going to learn from it. Maybe I'm going to learn that I can't trust you with to take care of my plants when I'm on vacation. Maybe I've learned that I can't trust you with secrets. Maybe I've learned that I can't trust myself to do xyz. All right, well, I've learned that now I'm going to let go of that anger and I am going to move on. I'm going to use my energy instead of stewing on it to learn how to prevent it from happening in the future. And then I'm going to let it go. I'm going to say, all right is what it is. Doesn't mean I forget, because I have that learning now. It's in my schema. But it's not worth continuing to drip cortisol and glutamate and those stress hormones repeatedly. Curiosity helps with neurogenesis when you get curious, when you try to learn new things, hey, maybe you want anything you want to learn. It starts increasing activity in your brain, and it starts increasing neurogenesis. So get curious. In neurocognitive circles, they call this building up your cognitive reserve. You're actually building up backup neurons to oversimplify it. So get curious and learn things. Be creative. And creativity takes a lot of different forms. It doesn't necessarily mean painting. It can mean singing. It can mean cooking. It can mean Building things, whatever creativity looks like to you. Reprogramming. This is when you start addressing whatever your anxiety triggers are. Remember, we've talked in the past about how anxiety is a needed emotion. It's part of the fight or flight response and it's designed to keep us safe. However, sometimes our threat response system, it's kind of like a smoke alarm. Sometimes it goes off and it's a false positive. It goes off and there's really not a threat. So reprogramming helps you use mindfulness and cognitive restructuring and there's other videos on that to recognize. You start feeling anxious, you look around, you say, okay, what triggered this anxiety? This, whatever this is, this triggered my anxiety right now. Could be a smell, it could be a sight, it could be something you got to do. Whatever. This triggered my anxiety. Now looking at it and saying, is this really a threat to me right now? In this context, A lot of times we're going to look at this, whatever this is and go, you know what? No, it's not that big of a deal, or I can handle it, or whatever you want to say. But then you're essentially reprogramming or rebranding whatever that is as a non threat. It may take doing it a couple of times before it's truly solidified, before that path is truly cleared out. But it is possible to start reprogramming. For the longest time, I was afraid of snakes. Now I live with one, my son's pet snake. I'm actually not speaking metaphorically. For the longest time I was afraid of spiders. Now I name them, I love them, and it's just a matter of adjusting your relationship with things. If you recognize that, hey, this has triggered my stress response, but there's really no reason for it. Every time I do that think, just think to yourself, is this worth killing brain cells over or is the stress more threatening than the actual trigger? Scaffolding. This is really important. Scaffolding is helping yourself get stronger, helping yourself clear that path, strengthen those brain muscles. Don't expect yourself to start feeling. Maybe you start feeling better, you're coming out of your depressive episode, or you're getting over your grief and you wake up and you expect Monday, I'll be able to remember things, no problem. Well, that's not going to happen. Scaffolding is important. Write things down, give yourself a backup. So if you do forget, you've got something that you can look back and rely on. Otherwise, maybe you go to the grocery store and you think, well, I can remember everything that's on my list, but you don't. Well, then you're gonna get frustrated because you forgot something and maybe you'll get angry that you gotta drive back to the store to get whatever it is. Well, that's stress. Those are stress hormones. If you would use scaffolding, even if you didn't walk around with the list in your hand, if you had the list on your mobile device, then you'd have everything that you needed on that list in case you forgot. So before you checked out, you could go over that list, make sure you had everything, and then go check out. Easy as that. And memory is one of those things that's kind of quirky. When we're overtired, when we are overwhelmed, when we've been too busy, when we haven't gotten enough sleep. There's a lot of things that impair memory. There's a lot of things that impair our attention. And it's important to use scaffolding and try to gradually improve your memory, Gradually improve your attention. Don't go from having, you know, the attention span of a gnat to expecting to be able to focus for an hour and a half. Not realistic. Go from having a three minute attention span to trying to focus for five minutes and do that for a while, maybe a whole week, and then say, okay, let me see if I can focus for six minutes or seven minutes and gradually increase. And I know that sounds arduous and it can be, but it is better to set small achievable goals and accomplish them more quickly than expected than to set big goals and fail to achieve them because failure triggers the stress response. Environmentally, create external safety. If you don't feel safe in your environment, you're not going to be able to relax. You're going to have that HPA axis activated and you're going to have those stress hormones in your body. Maybe not surging, but you're going to have those stress hormones present. Create safety any way you can. Feng shui has some suggestions for ways to do it. But even without that, just look around your room, look around your house, Ask yourself, what could I do so I could feel more safe, content and relaxed in this environment? Sensory music, for example, is one of those things that can help with neurogenesis. But because music can help us relax, it can also prompt positive feelings. It can also sometimes get us moving. So we're increasing blood flow and oxygenation if we start dancing or even tapping your foot. Essential oils. And remember, essential oils, all you have to do is smell them. They can be atomized in the air. Obviously not. If you are sensitive to smells, but you don't need to apply them, you definitely don't ingest them. But lemon and lavender have both been shown in clinical studies to increase neurogenesis rebuilding of the hippocampus, that area that shrinks when we've got anxiety. That area that is responsible for learning, memory and emotion processing. Imagine that as a double whammy, if you will. Lavender and lemon both also have been shown to reduce stress hormones, including salivary cortisol. So cortisol is one of those things they can measure in your saliva. Lemon and lavender, or lemon or lavender can be very helpful to, to the recovery process. I personally am very particular about the lavender smell. Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn't. And there are so many different kinds of lavender. I really prefer the actual plant that I kill every single time. So I've kind of given up on it. But lemon, oh, love lemon. Essential oil of lemon is relatively inexpensive. You can also get pure D. Limonene, which is the terpene, which is a constituent of lemon, and you can use it as a cleaner. It is an amazing degreaser. I use it on my range hoods and a couple of times a year I use it to degrease the floors and everything. It's wonderful. Smells amazing. Bergamot, sandalwood, rose, clary, sage and rosemary all have also been found to reduce cortisol levels in humans. Now, rose essential oil gets kind of pricey. So unless you have unlimited funds or what have you, rose may be down on the list for things that, for essential oils that you try. I always encourage people, if they want to experiment with essential oils, to go somewhere like a health food store where you can actually smell the essential oils first. Because your nose knows if you smell something and you're like, oh, nasty, then that is not something that your. You probably need. If, if you smell something and you're like, oh, I like that smell, I want to smell that again, then it's something that may be potentially beneficial for you. Being aware of that is, is really important. And getting, if you're going to use essential oils, getting good quality therapeutic grade essential oils is also really important. Even though you're not ingesting it, you're not applying it still better because you're going to have a better quality of essential oil and maybe even a higher quantity or higher level of the terpenes or the aromatic compounds that are responsible for promoting the hippocampal neurogenesis or cortisol reducing effect relationally. Silencing that inner critic, and this is what I call inner safety. Silencing that inner critic, or at least developing a relationship with it. A lot of times we can't completely silence it, but when your inner critic pops up, being able to either tell it, you know, thanks for the input, but I don't really want to listen right now, or telling it to be quiet or acknowledging whatever your inner critic says. And one of the phrases we use in recovery a lot is take what's useful and leave the rest. Sometimes your inner critic has a little kernel of wisdom, but a lot of times it's just annoying. And I have other videos on the inner critic. That's a whole topic in and of itself. Enhancing your self esteem so you feel safe, empowered and confident can be very liberating and helpful for rebuilding your brain and reducing stress. When you feel good about yourself, you're not relying on other people to provide you validation. You're able to look in the mirror and go, I'm all that. Thank you. And if somebody doesn't like me, that's their problem. Oh, wow. How liberating is that to say, you know what? Everybody is not going to like me. That's just not realistic to expect every person in the world to like you. And if they don't like me, they're loss. Oh my gosh. Totally liberating the inner child. You want to develop a relationship with your inner child. That is the little person that you kind of put in the back of your brain. Those all the memories from your childhood that may or may not come out sometimes. Some people have a very happy inner child and it comes out even when they're adults and they can act silly and goofy and creative and enjoy it. My son's first preschool teacher was at one with her inner child. And she was an amazing preschool teacher. She was amazing with the kids, but she was very connected with her inner child. It seemed sometimes our inner child is wounded or frightened because of traumas that it experienced. When you, sometimes when you feel anxious, you may not recognize, it's like, well, what's triggering this right now? There's nothing going on. It could be a memory from your past, a childhood memory that's being triggered. Reminding yourself that you are the adult now, you are safe, you are empowered, can be, again, very liberating because then that part of your brain that is. I don't exactly know where you store it, but back here, those childhood memories that are strongly connected to the amygdala are able to be reorganized as, okay, this sucks. It was awful. However, I'm safe now, as opposed to, this sucks, it's awful, and every time I experience it, I'm going to be in danger. Now you can recognize that you're safe and you can refile those memories, so to speak. And finally, supportive relationships. I know after you've been anxious for a while, when you're recovering from anxiety or depression, sometimes relationships can seem completely overwhelming. And sometimes people can seem completely overwhelming because they're so concerned about how you're doing. It's like, just let me breathe, please. And it's important to be able to set and maintain healthy boundaries for certain. It's also important to be able to identify even one or two people that you can have a supportive relationship with, because supportive relationships promote the release of oxytocin, our bonding chemical. And oxytocin promotes drum roll, hippocampal neurogenesis. So oxytocin improves our learning, our memory, and our emotion processing. Now you can promote the release of oxytocin by doing nice things for other people, as well as even, you know, having a pet that you love very much. You know, walking up to a dog on the street and petting it on the head and going, hey, Fido, that's not going to release oxytocin. But really, you know, loving on a pet for 10 or 15 minutes, that can release oxytocin. It also, the release of oxytocin often triggers the reduction of stress chemicals. It reduces blood pressure, it reduces heart rate. Those are all stress parameters which tell us that those stress hormones are also going down. So oxytocin, your friend, anything that makes you happy promotes dopamine. That's going to be helpful. And anything that promotes relaxation is also going to be helpful at creating an environment in which your brain can rebuild itself and then providing your brain the tools it needs or the stuff it needs to rebuild itself. Anxiety and depression, like viruses or other illnesses, impact your sleep, your microbiome, energy, endurance, and your ability to focus on non survival activities. If you'd been bedridden for six months, you wouldn't expect to be right back at it when your illness was gone. You know, it would take time for your body to recover. That's why after six months in bed, you probably go to physical therapy. Well, that's the same thing we're talking about here. You need to allow your body to rebalance and get stronger.